Supervisor Vargas Says She’s Sorry

Denounces Disclosed Messages as a Smear Campaign

District 1 County Supervisor and Board Chair Nora Vargas has responded to leaked social media and chat messages.

Although she’s in week four of a non-speaking regimen following a medical diagnosis of nodules on her vocal chords, Vargas did call in an apology to Ellen Nash, chair of the San Diego chapter of the Black American Political Association of California.

“That fucking Ellen Nash” was the text of one of the leaked messages. Other messages, not aimed at anyone in particular as far as I can tell, suggested hostility aimed at politicos in San Diego’s Black community. An undated screenshot of a text referred to someone as “negritas vendidas” –  loosely translated meaning ‘Black woman sellout.’

Following the call, Nash told Voice of San Diego’s Scott Lewis that she intended to stand with Vargas:

• “I find this all to be a distraction from what’s important, which is the county’s $8 billion budget and changes it needs to be more responsive to flood victims, the homelessness crisis and the need for affordable housing,”

Supervisor Vargas issued two statements:

• “As a public servant, my words spoken in private have even greater weight and meaning than those spoken in public. For that, I apologize. I have spoken privately to the named parties and regret any undue hurt this has caused.”

• “It breaks my heart that an anonymous source has manipulated, and in some cases manufactured, private exchanges to create a narrative that is contrary to my values and lifelong work. This smear campaign is particularly hurtful because it perpetuates division at a time when unity and coalition building must be a priority. I recommit to doing the work to continue to build stronger and healthier communities together.”

What Vargas didn’t address was the fundamental critique of an open letter published at this site containing screenshots of the aforementioned texts, namely the shenanigans connected with selecting a new County Chief Administrative Officer (CAO). Eight local community and labor activists were signatories to the letter.

The job candidate likely favored by those signatories, Cindy Chavez, a Bay Area politician/labor leader, was dropped from consideration following the scandal-driven resignation of Supervisor Nathan Fletcher. Her reputation as a progressive was seen as positive by community and local groups hoping to overcome bureaucratic inertia slowing down changes in direction by the Board. 

The Building Industry Association of San Diego County opposed hiring Chavez, saying she lacked the administrative experience needed for the job. While that assertion may or may not be true, it’s hard to ignore the antagonisms between the BIA and labor over the years.

Another search for a CAO was initiated last fall and Chavez wasn’t among the finalists, which angered labor groups (including those representing county employees). A rally was held outside the county building in April that included a passionate speech by Brigette Browning, leader of the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council.

La Prensa publisher Arturo Castañares did not approve:

• Browning, who is a White, non-Hispanic woman, began her comments with a greeting in Spanish to the group that included many Hispanic workers, but then she used two slang comments that were used to demean Vargas, the first Latina to ever serve on the County Board of Supervisors after Cuban-American Lou Conte became the first Hispanic in 1973.

• “Buenos dias, so, I want to talk about our Chair, the Chingona,” Browning said mockingly to open her remarks in front of a large group of union workers. 

The opposition to the method of selecting a CAO post-Nathan Fletcher encountered pushback, with calls made for Browning to step down from her leadership role at the Labor Council.

Underlying all this hubbub are decades-long local political antagonisms between Blacks-Latinos and also developers-organized labor. And there are likely other rifts not obvious to me. 

***

Perhaps Supervisor Vargas didn’t respond to the thrust of the open letter because a new CAO has already been decided upon.

On Wednesday, the Board of Supervisors reportedly offered the job of CAO to Ebony Shelton, the chief financial officer of the county. The job offer won’t be a done deal until such time as a public hearing takes place next week.

Once again, Scott Lewis at Voice of San Diego:

• Ebony Shelton would be the first Black woman to lead the county’s operations as CAO and her finance background could prove useful as the county prepares for ramifications from the California state budget deficit.

• The context for all of this lies in the history of the county. In the 1990s, it was on the precipice of bankruptcy before a series of executives helped put it on sounder footing. But that was also part of the leadership of a conservative Board of Supervisors, which hoarded reserves, restricted access to social welfare benefits and had a more hostile relationship with unions. The reserves grew so large that the county built new facilities often with cash instead of borrowing at low interest rates and spending instead of public needs.

• So while the county developed a reputation for operational and management excellence, even some moderate conservatives felt like it had been unreasonably stingy. The unions put in motion term-limits for supervisors and then helped elect Democrats. Chavez was about to be the final step in implementing the new system. She is a progressive visionary who would sweep away any managers or bureaucracy in the way of enacting progressive policies.

One other consideration that should be included in understanding what’s going on at the county is the ongoing tension between developers who seek to expand the settled land and environmentalists, most of whom have now come around to supporting infill development.

For now, there are hurt feelings and frustration. I’m not sure there’s any quick or easy path to political unity in the near future. For those dependent on the social safety net the county provides more uncertainty looms ahead. The political will to tackle the big problems facing us all won’t come back on its own. Somebody’s going to have to step up and be the bigger person.

***

Weekend Writings Worth Your Time

***

With Democratic assent, House votes to open loopholes in crypto regulation by Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times

• The bottom line is very clear. There’s no justification for bestowing on crypto a hand-manufactured regulatory scheme all of its own. Its promoters have no argument other than to claim that they need regulation-lite to foster “innovation,” when the result will be to facilitate the cheating of customers, laundering money or lubricating ransomware attacks like the one that has disrupted the crucial operations of the UnitedHealth Group subsidiary Change Healthcare, which manages reimbursement processes for medical providers nationwide.

• If there’s a corner of the financial world crying out for tougher regulation, it’s crypto. For Congress to even contemplate a slackening of the regulation that already exists is nothing short of absurd. But Congress doesn’t respond to practicalities; it responds to money. That’s the only driver of efforts like FIT21. [the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act]

***

Potential tough-on-crime ballot measure promises less homelessness. Experts aren’t convinced by Marisa Kendall and Yue Stella Yu at CalMatters

• Homelessness gets top billing in a measure likely to make it onto your November ballot. Whether the measure has anything to do with homelessness is debatable. 

• The initiative proponents are calling the “Homelessness, Drug Addiction, and Theft Reduction Act” would increase penalties for some drug and theft crimes, by rolling back Proposition 47 — the criminal justice changes California voters passed a decade ago. It also would force some people arrested three or more times for drug crimes into treatment.

• But where does homelessness factor into this tough-on-crime measure? The initiative includes no money for housing, shelter or treatment beds — leading some experts to question how it would help get California’s more than 181,000 unhoused residents off the street in a state where recent research shows loss of income is the leading cause of homelessness. Nor does the measure allocate or create new funding sources to pay cities or counties to enforce it. 

****

The myth of "woke" indoctrination at American universities by Judd Legum at Popular Information

• The best available data, however, does not support these theories. Open Syllabus, a non-profit group, collects syllabi from colleges and universities. The group has collected over 5.5 million syllabi at more than 4,000 American institutions of higher learning. The data is not comprehensive because Open Syllabus relies mostly on publicly available data. But it is the most robust database of what is actually taught on campus in the U.S. 

• Data collected by Open Syllabus reveals that, in 2023, "woke" terms like "critical race theory," "structural racism," or "transgender" appear in just 0.08% of college and university syllabi. These are all legitimate areas of inquiry but are derided by critics as evidence of academia's decline. In any event, the data shows they are not significant components of college and university curricula. 

• Even generic terms that encompass these terms appear in relatively few syllabi. The term "race" — allegedly an obsession of the modern university — appears in only 2.8% of the syllabi collected by Open Syllabus in 2023. Moreover, the prevalence of "race" in syllabi has remained relatively consistent over the last 15 years. Similarly, "gender" appeared in 4.7% of syllabi in 2023 — a rate that has held fairly steady since 2008.